No more side-by-side view supported

[iiey]

• ColoredDiffs: 2.1.0
• Thunderbird: 78.7.1 (64bit)
• Ubuntu: 16.04

My Thunderbird updated colorediffs from v1.9 to v2.1.0 and this feature does not work any more.

I found no way to change viewmode.

The options at the bottom as show below in Colored Diffs - Add-ons site do not exist.

Am I missing something or is it a bug in new release?

Thank you very much for maintaining this excellent add-on and thank in advance!

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Edited: I read commit message and found out new release didn't implement with side-by-side viewmode.

• Would it be possible to have side-by-side again? This was the only salient point of this add-on.
• If yes, is there any plan for it in the near future (2.1.x or 2.2.x,..) ?

[Qeole]

Hi and thanks for the feedback!

I had to rewrite the add-on entirely to port it to Thunderbird 78+. I don't have much time to spend on this, so I wanted something simple, but that works and won't break too quick (add-on maintenance has been painful over the last versions). So in the process, I switched to a different method of colouring the messages, and we don't parse and transform the body of the message anymore in the core of the add-on. Instead, the embedded library does the work for analysing the content, inserting the <span> and applying the colours. This means that there is no easy way to rewrite the body to have a side-by-side view, and I don't plan to add something more complex.

If you are missing the feature too much and consider contributing, some possible options would be:

• Find a way to parse and transform the body in the current code of the add-on to get the side-by-side view. I don't have the time or motivation to work on this, and to be honest, I'd rather keep the add-on minimal to lower the maintenance burden as much as possible.
• Start from the previous version of the add-on (1.9), and find a way to adapt it to recent versions of Thunderbird. It should be doable, either by using the API provided as part of the new MailExtension add-on framework, or by using what Thunderbird call “experiments” (allowing you to hook into the legacy API, with increased risks of breakage over time). This would likely result in a fork of the current add-on.

Regarding your observations:

• I documented the removal of the side-by-side view in the commit log indeed. I thought I had done it in the README or changelog too, but I realise that was not the case. I should have done so, my bad.
• The picture on addons.thunderbird.net is outdated. There used to be two other pictures for the other modes: I removed those but I didn't take the time to update the remaining one (I intended to do so and eventually forgot, I'll try to take care of it at some point).

TL;DR Side-by-side or context views are no longer available, because the add-on is not under active development and I switched to something minimal when porting it to Thunderbird 78+. I'm sincerely sorry if you're missing the feature, but I have no time or motivation to add it back myself.

[iiey]

Hey Qeole,

Thank you very much for the detail explanation!
I understand how much work did it take you to write add-on again from scratch because of Thunderbird 78+ and really appreciate it.

Unfortunately, I don't have enough knowledge in this area to make the contribution. But I think other developers out there sooner or later will help. It would make sense that we let the issue open so other can easy find and follow the story.

[Qeole]

Yep agreed, I'll keep the issue open. Thanks again for the report!

[Qeole]

I updated the screenshots on the page of the add-on, so they reflect the current UI.